Dedicated to Jesus Christ, Now and Forever

First, the endocrinologist agreed to see Ashli yesterday morning instead of having her wait until the end of the month. The doctor also assured Ashli that treatment for her pancreatic condition would not be delayed or impeded by the adrenal issues. We are awaiting the results of those tests.

Second, at the afternoon meeting with the gasterenterologist, the doctor offered some (extremely) guarded optimism regarding the growth on the pancreas. He confirmed that the calcification counted against malignancy. He also stated that Ashli’s youth weighed meaningfully against a cancer diagnosis. He is still concerned about the growth, however, and will be proceeding with the endoscopic ultrasound (including a biopsy) next week. If it does turn out to be benign, the tumor will likely be left in and periodically monitored. The doctor noted that there was not a particularly high chance of a benign tumor turning malignant.

Towards the end, the doctor’s assistant opined to Ashli that based on her experience she thought the doctor was “not worried.” Whether she was merely trying to be comforting Ashli could not tell. Although the meeting brought her some relief, she is still very much worried and asks for your continued prayers. Regardless of outcome of her tests, she will seek a high quality second opinion and fight vigorously for herself and her family.

Thank you for your prayers for our friend Ashli McCall. Please continue to pray for her.

Today Ashli is busy preparing for her beautiful daughter’s fifth birthday. She hopes to celebrate many more of those birthdays, and birthdays for her son as well. She hopes to dance at their weddings.

But right now she faces the future with great fear and uncertainty. After testing raised concerns regarding her adrenal function, she underwent a CAT scan. On Wednesday, the results indicated a 1.8 centimeter growth on the tail of her pancreas. Tests are continuing and no firm diagnosis has yet been made. She does not know whether it is benign, pre-cancerous or malignant.

At a follow-up visit yesterday afternoon, the doctor somewhat hopefully indicated that he didn’t think that she was a “Michael Landon or a Patrick Swayze.” He said that there was calcification, which is present in only approximately 20% of cancerous tumors, but it is not clear whether that means that the odds are 80% against malignancy. The doctors are currently reviewing her medical history, particularly with respect to hyperemesis, to shed light on her condition. She will meet with a specialist on Monday regarding the scheduling of an endoscopic ultrasound and other matters.

She will also undergo further testing with regard to the adrenal issue. The doctors have indicated that they would like to clarify the nature of that problem before going forward with any surgery (if necessarY) to avoid the need for multiple surgeries. Ashli is concerned about the potential delay involved with that approach.

That is all we know at this juncture. We are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. Ashli has asked to me to share this information with you, and encourages you to share it with others and seek their prayers.

She would also welcome any information or advice you could offer regarding doctors, hospital and treatment programs. After over a decade of tireless research and advocacy for women with hyperemesis, she is simply spent. This new mountain that has suddenly appeared at her feet is one she does not even want to look at, much less climb. She needs others to carry her over it. Please help.

“Pro-lifers only care about babies before they are born.” The accusation is false, but for a change today I’ll focus on a threat facing some of the most vulnerable among the post-born. Specifically, those kids whose safety may depend on social workers at child welfare agencies.

The threat in this case is a particular social worker with a Delaware agency: Vice President Joe Biden’s cokehead daughter. She was caught on video a few weeks ago snorting cocaine with dollar bills, cursing and complaining that the lines weren’t long enough.

However we may disagree about abortion, we can find common ground in the proposition that born children shouldn’t be cared for by drug addicts. Indeed, an oft-repeated pro-choice argument is that children are better off dead than entrusted to such individuals. So let’s hope that CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and MSNBC are vigilant in exposing Biden’s daughter as a danger to America’s kids. The scandal is certainly at least as relevant the marijuana-related arrest of Sarah Palin — no, Sarah Palin’s daughter — no, Sarah Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend — no, Sarah Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend’s mother — which occurred after Palin lost the election. In contrast, Biden is the sitting Vice President!

And while they’re at it, the press should vigorously pursue the following questions:

Does Biden’s daughter come to work high on cocaine?

Does Biden’s daughter sell cocaine to the children she counsels?

Does President Obama sell Biden’s daughter the cocaine?

(Obama has never indicated when he stopped doing “blow,” as he calls it, so there’s no guarantee that he did. We do know that he is addicted to cigarettes, and that he lied about quittingthat habit. And since we’ve never gotten the name of his drug dealer, for all we know he dealt it himself).

Is TARP money used for any of the dollar bills that Biden’s daughter rolls to snort coke with?

Perhaps New York Times reporter Jody Kantor should lead this important investigation. During the presidential campaign, she sent Facebook e-mails to the teenaged friends of Cindy McCain’s 16 year old daughter to “get a sense” of what Cindy was like as a mother. Biden’s daughter is fully 27, with a mother-like responsibilty for children herself. We need to know what kind of a social worker she is.

The reality-based community is working overtime to heap scorn upon pro-life activist Gingi Edmonds for pointing out that the victims of the Montana plane crash perished near the Tomb of the Unborn, and that they were the family of the owner of the nation’s largest for-profit abortion chain. For example, Kevin Beck calls her “hateful,” “angry,” an “embarassment,” and “human swinehood.” In a comment, he predicts that “[h]er reputation is never going to recover from this.”

Let’s suppose, instead, that Gingi was talking about a disaster with a greater toll on human life. Like the earthquake in China last year that killed not 14, but 80,000 — including thousands of children and babies. Let’s say that she used these words to suggest that China’s treatment of Tibet was responsible:

Then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and I thought, is that karma? When you’re not nice, that the bad things happen to you?

Obama-endorser Sharon Stone said that, but her reputation seemed to recover just fine. In fact, she was invited to the Presidental inauguration. Nobody protested her attendance there — in fact, the only fuss at all was the hissy fit that she threw when the organizers wouldn’t admit her entire entourage.

I suggest that there is a scientific reason for the lack of outrage. Having controlled for all other variables that might explain the quick forgiveness accorded Stone for her statement, I have determined that there is only one factor that would explain why she is not a social pariah. She loves baby-killing!

NOTE: Beck helpfully links to Andrea Shea King’s radio interview with Gingi Edmonds earlier this week. Among other things, she discusses her efforts to warn others of Feldkamp’s abortion business (passing out flyers to patients of his dentistry chain and informing his neighbors) and her views on President Obama and Governor Kathleen Sebelius. Notably, she relates that she used to be roommates with the survivor of a partial birth abortion.

Irving “Bud” Feldkamp, the owner of the nation’s largest for-profit abortion chain, lost nine family members when their plane crashed into a Montana cemetery — not far from the Tomb for the Unborn, dedicated to all babies killed by abortion. The victims, pictured below, were Feldkamp’s five young grandchildren, his two daughters and their husbands. One daughter was a pediatrician and the other a dental hygienist; one husband was a dentist and the other an ophthalmologist.

In my time working for Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, I helped organize and conduct a weekly campaign where youth activists stood outside of Feldkamp’s mini-mansion in Redlands holding fetal development signs and raising community awareness regarding Feldkamp’s dealings in child murder for profit. Every Thursday afternoon we called upon Bud and his wife Pam to repent, seek God’s blessing and separate themselves from the practice of child killing.

We warned him, for his children’s sake, to wash his hands of the innocent blood he assisted in spilling because, as Scripture warns, if “you did not hate bloodshed, bloodshed will pursue you.” (Ezekiel 35:6)

A news source states that Bud Feldkamp visited the site of the crash with his wife and their 2 surviving children on Monday. As they stood near the twisted and charred debris talking with investigators, light snow fell on the tarps that covered the remains of their children.

I don’t want to turn this tragic event into some creepy spiritual “I told you so” moment, but I think of the time spent outside of Feldkamp’s – Pam Feldkamp laughing at the fetal development signs, Bud Feldkamp trying not to make eye contact as he got into his car with a small child in tow – and I think of the haunting words, “Think of your children.” I wonder if those words were haunting Feldkamp as well as he stood in the snow among the remains of loved ones, just feet from the Tomb of the Unborn?

I only hope and pray that in the face of this tragedy, Feldkamp recognizes his need for repentance and reformation. I pray that God will use this unfortunate catastrophe to soften the hearts of Bud and Pam and that they will draw close to the Lord and wash their hands of the blood of thousands of innocent children, each as precious and irreplaceable as their own.

Professor PZ Myers of Pharyngula finds Gingi’s “hideous” and “evil” and declares her to be a “moral cretin.” He writes:

All I can feel is horror at the kinds of monsters who would find grim satisfaction in the death of 6 to 10 year old children, as if it were payback for abortion. At amoral pious hypocrites who would regard this as an opportunity to assault human beings broken-hearted by pain and loss, to proselytize for the bloody-handed god of their death cult, to compound agony with accusations of guilt. There is no humanity left in these sanctimonious creatures, it’s been bled out and replaced with fanaticism and dogma.

* * *

It’s a piece that reveals so much about the author: her own unconcern for human life, and her smug obliviousness of the fact that she is taking advantage of a tragedy to say her petty “I told you so”.

Once again, I am confirmed in my opinion that Christianity is a breeder of evil, a cesspit in which the most hateful and inhuman commitment to lies and delusions can ferment. Don’t ever preach at me about Christian morality: I’ve seen it, and it is empty of love for humanity, replaced with sanctimonious idolatry and commitment to dead, dumb superstition.

Myers later points out that one of the women on the plane was five months pregnant. It might also be noted that Feldkamp was a major donor and big supporter of pro-life obstetrician/gynecologist/Presidential candidate Ron Paul.

I will save the question regarding God’s will for last. I’ll start by identifying some reasons that I believe Professor Myer’s outrage is misplaced, whether analyzed from a religious or atheistic perpective.

(1) Gingi Edmonds is not a hideous evil cretin because she dedicates her life to saving lives. Without activists like her, countless people would lose the joy of parenthood and grandparentood to predatory, profiteering abortion mills. Affording counsel, comfort and assistance to women who are under pressure to abort can change their hearts and lives and I have countless pictures to prove it. I don’t know what charitable activities Professor Myers pursues but from a utilitarian perspective I would wager than Gingi has brought at least as much joy into this world as he.

(2) Myers has not identified what harm flows from Gingi’s words other than his own apparent irritation. Presumably he fears that the family of the deceased will be offended by her words (a possibility greatly increased by his own circulation of the story). But the family is a Christian one and the question of God’s agency in the tragedy has undoubtedly already occurred to them. At the funeral, the question of why so many beautiful people were permitted to perish, or were actively called to God, will be discussed. Were Professor Myers sitting in the pews, he could level his “bloody-handed god of their death cult” regardless of what precise conclusion were reached. Myers attack on Gingi’s theology is equally an attack on their own. He is calling everyone who believes in God’s sovereignty “hideous” and “evil.”

(3) The atheism promoted on Myer’s blog will cause far more pain to the family that Gingi’s words. Myers declares that there is no God, that there is no hope for life after death, that families died for no reason, for nothing, and that they are gone forever. The incessant blasphemy against our Lord and Savior will only compound the insult and injury.

(4) Gingi’s words offer to salvage some good from the tragedy. Contrary to Myers’ speculation, Feldkamp may very well remember her words and change his ways. Former abortionist explains the tragedy that transformed his life:

As a physician in Troy, NY, I performed abortions in
my office for eight years. I believed it was “pro-woman” to provide this option. While abortion was never a major part of my practice, as time went on it caused me more and more conflict.

My wife and I were seeking to adopt a child, and all the while I was throwing other people’s children in the garbage at the rate of 9 or 10 a week. I began to think, “If only one of these women could give us her child.”

Eventually, my wife and I were successful in adopting a healthy girl, Heather. On June 23, 1984, Heather was hit by a car and died. When you lose your child, life is very different. Everything changes. That’s when things really changed for me regarding abortion. I realized as never before that the child I was killing in each abortion was somebody’s precious child. My own loss enabled me to value life even more.

I began to feel like a paid assassin . . . and that’s exactly what I was. My self-esteem plummeted, and so did my interest in doing abortions. In 1985 I stopped.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a founder of NARAL who was responsible for over 75,000 abortions and personally aborted one of his own children, had a similar change of heart. Feldkamp may seriously reconsider whether he wishes to continue to profit off clinics which kill grandchildren without notifying the grandparent and which encourage frightened young women to abort their children at the most vulnerable times of their lives.

(5) In other contexts, the non-religious willingly accept such “conversions” brought about by tragedy. Consider, for example, this story from last week about an opium dealer whose wife and three children were killed in drug-related violence. He may have believed that drug dealing was a victimless crime, that his family was innocent, that their killing was unjustified, but he nevertheless regretted his participation in the industry. It may be that we find this sort of “justice” offensive, and we may sympathize with both the drug dealer and his family, but we recognize that some good may come out of the situation. Myers may reject the notion that a God could have a hand in any such tragedies; but if that is that case there is no sort of justice at all. Just a random, meaningless accident.

(6) Note that Myers’ outrage is directed solely at Gingi and her words, which did nothing to cause the tragedy. No similar venom is directed at the persons who might be presumed to bear greater moral responsibility than she, i.e., the ground crew, the flight crew, the pilot, etc. In this connection, one might observe that there is no outrage in the atheist blogosphere over the liberal Associated Press accounts of the crash to label the victims as “ultrarich.”

Ultimately, what most bothers Myers is how an infinitely rational being could contenance the shedding of innocent blood for some ulterior reason. It is only fair that I address that question. And I will do so, below the fold, with the words of the secular God whose answer to that precise question so many have found satisfactory.

The baby died with a shot to the heart and was left dead next to a toilet. Twenty-six weeks pregnant, the mother, Michelle Armesto-Berge, did not want the abortion, and the father begged her to keep the child. But Michelle’s mother wanted the abortion, and Dr. George Tiller was eager to help. His staff piled more pressure on Michelle, refused to let her see the ultrasound, falsely recorded the baby’s condition as “non-viable” and killed it with a shot to the heart.

Dr. Tiller’s trial started this morning in a Kansas courtroom. He’s charged with nineteen misdemeanors — for paying a doctor to rubber-stamp his viability determinations rather than consulting an independent physician as required by law. Pro-life protestors are in force, outside the building praying for justice.

Tiller has had the proud support of Kansas pro-choice Governor Kathleen Sebelius, now President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Although she and her cabal have long decried the Tiller prosecution as a political witchhunt, there will be no pro-choice counter-demonstrators at the courthouse today. Diane Wahto of ProKanDo explains why:

“This is a woman’s issue. It’s an issue of privacy. It’s not an issue that people should be out praying in front of a courtroom over.”

Which women ProKanDo speaks for is unclear. It’s doubtful it speaks for Michelle Armesto-Berge or her murdered child. But there is one man it certainly speaks for. Although it’s identified in the article only as a “pro-choice group,” ProKanDo is the Political Action Committee of abortionist Geore Tiller.

After President Obama mocked the Special Olympics on national television, Governor Sarah Palin condemned his “degrading remark about our world’s most precious and unique people.” This observation was too much for talk show host Bill Maher, who led a panel consisting of Senator Bernie Sanders, actress Kerry Washington and New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin in a round of hooting, hand-clapping laughter at Palin’s presumed stupidity. Things got a bit uncomfortable, however, when Maher specifically challenged Palin’s description of the disabled:

Imagine what would have happened if Maher had challenged the President’s “precious and unique” leadership skills. I’m pretty sure the whole panel would have stomped off the set in outrage.

Appearing on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno today, President Barack Obama likened his bowling ability to the comical ineptness of physically and mentally inferior human beings.

The hilarious comparison was inspired by Leno’s sarcastic crack that the Obama’s recent score of 129 at the White House’s private bowling alley was “very good.”

Not to be upstaged, the President retorted “It’s like the Special Olympics or something.”

The uproarious remark recalled the bumbling, uncoordinated antics of disabled individuals with impaired motor skills and mental retardation — whose athletic ability is often so poor that they are forced to compete against each other in segregated, “special” sporting events for the bemusement of higher beings such as this country’s chief executive.

Obama’s humble, self-effacing quip was particularly humorous because everyone know that, as surely as sun glints off his chiseled pectorals, he could bowl a perfect 300 if he were so inclined to exert himself to that end. The joke further cemented Obama’s reputation as world-class intellect, confident in his abilities and possessing the maturity and judgment befitting the world’s most powerful head of state.

But the President’s wit also underscored the serious burdens imposed upon society by lesser people, whose unnecessary lives could be avoided through enlightened abortion policies. After the laughter subsided, Obama reminded the audience that public figures such as Sarah Palin demeaned their office by giving birth to afflicted children who were doomed to be made laughingstocks by future administrations.